It is Christmas again and my head is spinning!

I find Christmas confusing… it’s a religious celebration, a holiday from work, a reason to have a party, a shopping frenzy, an exchange of gifts and greetings, a long-standing cultural tradition, and it is also ignored by many people. And it comes around so quickly every year, seemingly catching us unprepared each time.
What do you value about Christmas? And more broadly, what are values anyway?
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Looking back through history, the original Christmas event occurred in the Middle East about 2000 years ago, where Jesus Christ was born during a time of lost hope for those believers in God.
“Here is the saviour”, they said. His birth was set to restore new faith in God, so that in both life and death people could experience the presence of God.
Jesus’ message was, where access to God was traditionally funnelled through spiritual leaders, everyone now had access to God directly. For them, it was a kind of turning point.

Celebrations today may, or may not, value this meaning of Christmas. Some people value the traditional meaning. Others value Christmas as a family festival, others, again, as a party time. Three values – tradition, family, fun.

And there are many other values relevant to all parts of life – independence, authority, teamwork, creativity, discipline, compassion just to name a few. There are many, many different values.

One of the challenges with values is keeping them consistent. The field of psychology often helps people think through the consequences of their values. Life creates so many situations that cannot be predicted. For example, a Christian values forgiveness, but may be so offended that they cannot offer the forgiveness needed. A policeman commits a crime. A vegetarian eats meat. A teacher resists being taught.

In all these situations, the people have certain values – forgive others, obey the law, eat with respect to animal rights, and everyone can learn. But we also see that people sometimes cannot keep to their values.

Firstly, why bother with values at all? What do values achieve? Can’t I just live day to day, make whatever decisions I like, and keep going?

When running a careers workshop in China some years ago, I asked the group for three values that guided their lives (which we could use to help guide them towards a type of job they might be interested in). This was a question they could not answer. Not so many modern Chinese grow up with this kind of thinking.

So, what are the benefits of values?
• Guidelines for decision-making – whether you feel happy / sad, confused or clear, values simplify decisions, making them quicker and more consistent, and generally reliable.
• Community of believers – encouragement - when people meet, they can help each other make decisions, because they look at challenges or situations in life the same way, using the same principles, developing a language they find easy to understand.
• Give us confidence for the future (it has worked before, it can work again).
• Can act as motivators to initiate action (if I value this, then I should do that…).

And the difficulties?
• There is more than one set of values. Sincere people can value opposite things. Which is the right one? This can be both confusing and a cause of conflict.
• Accurate descriptions of values can be difficult, leading to lack of clarity, misinterpretation and misguided actions.
• People may adopt one values position and never shift / become closed to new information or alternatives. (All values are changing as the world develops - maybe this is a good thing?)

From a psychological pespective, coaching can help people when they realise they have a problem with values. This may happen when they catch themselves saying and doing things that they would criticise others for. Or they may get caught up in conflicts they do not understand.

• Take time to meditate or reflect on each day or week as it passes. What did you do well, what might you do differently?
• Ask yourself – “What is the one constant motivation for my actions?” Common answers to this are: feed my family, earn money, be successful, enjoy work, be independent, act first-think later (”do it now”). Everyone has a slightly different one – what’s yours?
• Identify what you can control and what you cannot. Relax about things outside of your control.
• Allow people the freedom to think their way, just as you want the freedom to think your way (unless the actions from certain values do harm to others).
• Ask people about what they ‘value’ and listen – don’t judge – try to learn.

And this Christmas is a good time to start. Becoming more clear about your values does not mean things will change necessarily, but you may see threads of meaning in your life, that before you thought were random.
Keep and appreciate the good ones, and plan changes to the others as needed. Drop me a note if you want to talk something through…